Automotive vehicle design is often governed by numerous diverse design objectives. Components comprising the automobile must often meet criteria ranging from strength and durability to style and comfort. Automotive designers and engineers are, therefore, attune to the fact that the vehicle as a whole as well as individualized components must interact with vehicle passengers to provide a plurality of benefits. One significant design category centers around passenger safety.
Although modern vehicle designs typically represent the pinnacle of passenger safety, automotive designers constantly strive to further reduce any impact on vehicle passengers stemming from a vehicle accident or collision. In this light there has been increased attention in reducing the impact of traffic incidents on passengers within the vehicle stemming from commonly occurring incidents such as rear-end collisions. Without proper consideration, rear-end collisions can subject passengers to stresses in the neck or cervical column and on occasion may result in injuries commonly referred to as whiplash. Modern vehicle design has addressed these considerations through a variety of approaches ranging from energy absorbing bumpers to improved car-seat design.
The goal of each of these approaches is to minimize any violent relative movement between a passenger's body and head. One successful approach to limiting such movement has been through the use of a head-rest assembly mounted to the vehicle seat. Although statically placed head-rest assemblies can provide a considerable level of whiplash protection, it is known that further development of both the vehicle seat and head-rest assembly can serve to further reduce the amount relative motion experienced by passengers. One known development moves the headrest forward to engage the passenger's head during rear-impact collisions. A variety of approaches have been proposed in order to facilitate the forward motion of the headrest including activation due to the passenger's rearward motion.
What many of these approaches fail to adequately address is the passenger's penetration into the seat during the rear-impact collision. The passenger's penetration into the seat can potentially serve as more than simply an activation of the headrest forward motion. The passenger penetration, if properly controlled, can help control the relative position of the passenger neck and body to further reduce the impact of the collision. Furthermore, passenger penetration could benefit from an assembly that helped absorb the energy of the passenger's movement to reduce the overall impact or shock on the passenger due to a rear-end collision. These improvements could be utilized to further reduce the impact of a collision on a vehicle passenger and thereby increase a designs value and benefits.
It would therefore be highly desirable to have an automotive seat-back assembly that reduced the relative motion of a passenger's neck and body during rear-impact collisions. It would further be highly desirable to develop an automotive seat-back assembly that controlled passenger penetration into the seat-back during rear-impact collisions to absorb energy from the passenger and further reduce the impact of the collision.